Extra Exercises
Extra Exercises
These optional extensions build on Power Automate Fundamentals. Allow 10–15 minutes per exercise and a further five minutes if building and testing the proposed flow. Use a practice copy and test recipients; diagrams and test plans are valid fallbacks where accounts or connectors are unavailable.
Reminder Flow
Create a scheduled flow that checks an Excel table for rows where Status is not Complete and DueDate is before today. Send a reminder email for each overdue row.
Input: a fictional practice table with a stable RequestID, DueDate, Status and Email. The supplied course workbook does not contain these extra columns, so prepare a separate example. Include one overdue item, one future item, one complete item and one missing date.
Keep: the filter design and a test matrix showing which rows should receive a reminder. Define the date format, timezone and handling of a missing date rather than silently treating it as overdue.
Room response and debrief: two pairs explain one excluded row. Ask how to prevent the same reminder being sent more often than intended, and where the last reminder date would be recorded.
Approval Escalation Design
Design an approval process where unanswered approvals are escalated after two working days. Identify where the escalation state should be recorded.
Input: a fictional equipment request, an approver, a backup approver and an agreed working-day calendar. Treat “two working days” as this exercise’s process requirement, not an institutional policy.
Keep: a state diagram for approved, rejected, waiting and escalated requests; a test for a weekend or holiday; and the authoritative record location.
Room response and debrief: two groups explain how a late response is handled after escalation. A fixed 48-hour delay does not represent two working days; the design needs an explicit calendar rule and a single authoritative decision state.